Hundreds of staff at banking giant Lloyds TSB were today voting on whether to strike in protest at the closure of a Tyneside call centre.

Members of Unifi are being balloted over the next few weeks as part of a union campaign to halt the closure of the centre in Newcastle, with the loss of almost 1,000 jobs.

Work is being switched to India as part of a growing trend to outsource contracts from the UK which is alarming trade unions.

Bernadette Fisher, national officer of Unifi, said: "Staff at the call centre feel completely let down that the bank is putting profits before people.

"They want the opportunity to voice their disgust at the way they're being treated."

The result of the ballot will be announced before Christmas, when union leaders will decide the next move.

Meanwhile it has emerged a town hall pension fund has a £5.5m stake in the bank. Local authority leaders plan to use the shareholding as a lever to bring pressure on the bank to reverse a decision to close its Newcastle call centre and switch jobs to India.

The Tyne & Wear Superannuation Fund which runs the pension scheme for local authority workers in Newcastle, Sunderland, Gateshead, North Tyneside and South Tyneside, holds 1,350,800 shares in the banking giant. This is tiny compared with the total shares in Lloyds TSB which stands at nearly 5.6 billion.

But Newcastle City Council leader, Tony Flynn, said: "Shareholders are entitled to go to the annual meeting and bring up issues. It gives us an opportunity to challenge what they are proposing and seek to influence other shareholders."

Politicians and unions are campaigning to save the jobs and hope to meet bank bosses. Bank bosses say they are willing to meet local council leaders and are also ready to talk about the £230,000 handed over by Newcastle Council to help set up a call centre in the city. However, they say there was no contract with the council and they received no grant directly.

Newcastle City Council says although it did not have an agreement directly with Lloyds TSB, it had an agreement with the bank through Sunderland Council. It became involved after the bank decided to set up a call centre in Sunderland and began looking for a second location.

A bank spokeswoman said it has offered a meeting but the council has not been in touch with a date. "We understand there may have been a private agreement between Sunderland City Council and Newcastle City Council. Lloyds TSB was neither a party to this agreement nor privy to it."